For non-depressing, non-political news — turn to science
Maybe you’re getting a little stressed out. Let’s say it’s increasingly difficult to ignore the political news these days — the stuff about the looming government shutdown, the tariffs, the Tesla sitting on the White House front lawn, the green-card-carrying legal resident of the U.S. being detained for being a member of a group who said some things that Republicans didn’t like. Who could blame you?
If you’re like me, you’re on the hunt for any information, any news flash that isn’t divided along political lines. If you go to social media, you’re mostly shown posts that “boost engagement,” which essentially means things that are guaranteed to make you mad. I stumbled upon one recently from a loose acquaintance suggesting that the president of Ukraine, who is Jewish, is a Nazi.
I check in on Twitter, which pre-Elon Musk used to be funny and full of important news, once every month or so to see if it’s still the kind of place where people give credence to arguments that the earth is flat and the measles are good for you (spoiler alert: it still is exactly that kind of place). Instagram is fine but unless your idea of news includes well-lit pictures of avocado toast, there isn’t much there.
I even went to an AI chatbot the other day and asked it for some non-political current events. After lecturing me on how difficult it is to separate politics from news events (you’re telling me, buddy), it lamely offered that apparently, ducks are dying off.
When I asked for nonpolitical news, I should have been more specific. Don’t bum me out, either.
So I’ve done some hunting around of my own — just me, a keyboard and a little-known 1990s invention called Google — to find non-bummer, nonpolitical news stories. Here are a few of the ones I stumbled on.
Scientists recently analyzed information from the James Webb Space Telescope that showed that our universe may totally exist inside a black hole, giving renewed life to all the stoner hypotheses about how maybe we’re just all, like, living on the back of a giant dog or something, man. The wildest part of what’s already a wild story is that if theories are correct and we are actually in a black hole, that could mean that every black hole is a door to an entirely new universe. Mind officially blown, dude.
In Italy, researchers managed to freeze light, turning it into what’s called a “supersolid,” which has characteristics of solid structure but also flows without friction. I understand virtually none of that, but I enjoy picturing some scientist coming home after a big day at work and trying to interrupt an argument between his kids about whether Yoshi will be in the next “Super Mario Brothers” movie to tell them his good news.
Fossilized bone fragments found in Northern Spain prove that our ancient hominid ancestors were alive and roaming around Western Europe as much as 1.1 million years ago. The partial face found at the Sima del Elefante site is believed to be of a Homo erectus, the researchers say, which has never before been definitively found in Europe. Just when we thought we had European history figured out, a million-year-old skull shows up and says, “Hey, I was here first.”
This week, the International Astronomical Union ratified (I did not realize there was a group of people who did this) 128 new moons of the planet Saturn, bringing the gas giant’s total number of moons to 274. The scientist who discovered them, Dr. Edward Ashton, told The New York Times there could be plenty more-possibly even thousands-but that he’ll likely leave the work of teasing those out to others.
“I’m a bit mooned out at the moment,” he reportedly said.
If you’ll notice, all of these news items — interesting, current, nonpolitical — have something in common. They’re all about science. I think of it this way: Even in amid great chaos and even greater hatred, the world keeps moving forward. It is constantly changing. Discoveries are being made. New heights are being achieved.
Politics seems inescapable. It seems like it will destroy us all.
But what my news discoveries have shown me is that, in many ways, politics are an illusion. Like all temporary states, all political divisions will dwindle in importance and eventually fall away. Who even remembers the political strife that Pericles faced in Classical Athens? Who knows about the political backbiting undergone in the court of Queen Elizabeth I? Only historians can view these conflicts dispassionately, through the lens of time.
One day our conflicts will be as dusty, as arcane. I’m sure of it.
In the meantime, I’ll keep my mind on the fascinating, apolitical world of science and entertain myself with the exploits of paleo-archaeologists. Feel free to join me.
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Georgia Garvey is a nationally syndicated columnist.